Risk factors of pain chronification after surgery

Chronic post surgical pain is a major health care problem, with devoting considerable attention in the last decade. With varying intensity chronic pain occurs in 10 – 60 % of patients, while 2 – 10 % of these patients suffer from severe and devastating pain. Knowledge of risk factors is important for creating effective strategies for its prevention and treatment. The proper management of the acute postoperative pain is very important step considering that insufficiently controlled acute postoperative pain is consistently found to be an important risk factor for developing chronic post surgical pain. There is an opportunity for cooperation between nurses, surgeons, anaesthetists and chronic pain specialists. (author)